Misleading and prohibited trade names

Generic names that may not be used for any material, and market names that can mislead buyers, with the name to use instead and what to disclose.

Names never to be used for any material

These names identify no material at all, so they are recorded once here rather than on every entry. Names ruled out for one particular material are listed in that entry's name register.

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Name	Use instead	Why	Rule
Semi-precious (stone)	The specific material's basic name	GB/T 16552-2017 §5.1.2.1 d) lists 'semi-precious stone' among ambiguous names that must not be used; CIBJO Gemstone Book 2022 §4.1.1.8 likewise calls the term misleading and says it shall not be used. It names no material and only hints at a level of value.	Not to be used in any position; the trade name should give the basic name of the specific material.
'Synthetic product' (used on its own)	'Synthetic' + the natural counterpart's basic name	GB/T 16552-2017 §5.1.3.1 c) lists 'synthetic product' among ambiguous names that must not be used for synthetic gems; §5.1.3.1 a) requires 'synthetic' to be placed before the natural counterpart's basic name. On its own it does not say what was synthesised.	Never on its own; write 'synthetic' + the basic name (e.g. synthetic ruby).

Names that carry a mis-selling risk

Market names that are common in the trade but can mislead a buyer about what the material is or whether it has been treated. Each row gives the name to use instead, why, and what must be stated on the label.

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Name	Use instead	Why	Rule
Blue Sandstone Entry on this site: Man-made Blue Goldstone Glass	Blue Goldstone (man-made glass)	A man-made glass, not a sandstone or any natural stone.	Must be labelled as man-made glass; do not use "natural blue sandstone".
Black Goldstone Entry on this site: Man-made Black Goldstone Glass	Black Goldstone (man-made glass)	A man-made glass.	Must be labelled as man-made glass.
Cat's Eye	Fiber-optic cat's-eye glass (where man-made)	"Cat's eye" may refer to natural chrysoberyl cat's-eye or to other natural chatoyant materials.	Do not describe the goods as natural cat's-eye stone before identification.
Black Onyx Entry on this site: Black Agate	Dyed black agate (where applicable)	In mineralogical terms onyx is banded chalcedony, and black material on the market is usually dyed.	Disclose the treatment; do not equate black onyx with natural banded chalcedony.
Red Agate Entry on this site: Red Agate	Red agate (state whether dyed, on the basis of testing or supply-chain disclosure)	The red colour may be natural or the result of dyeing.	Do not claim "natural, no enhancement" without evidence.
Indian Jade Entry on this site: Aventurine Quartz / Green Aventurine	Aventurine / Green Aventurine	It is neither jadeite nor nephrite.	The word "jade" must not be used to imply jadeite or nephrite.
Hetian Jade Entry on this site: Hetian Yu / Nephrite	Hetian Yu (supported by report or origin evidence) or nephrite	The name touches on geographic origin, the national standard and material boundaries.	Make no origin claim without a report or other evidence.
Paraiba Tourmaline Entry on this site: Paraíba Tourmaline	Copper-bearing tourmaline (after identification)	The trade term involves copper content, colour and origin-related naming rules.	Follow the gemmological report and the rules of the destination market.
Coral, giant clam shell Entry on this site: Coral, Giant Clam Shell	State the species, the source and the compliance status	The material may be subject to CITES or to import legislation.	Have the compliance officer review the goods before sale.
Strawberry quartz, green hair quartz, black hair quartz Entry on this site: Strawberry Quartz, Quartz with green needle-like inclusions, Quartz with dark needle-like inclusions	Label as quartz with X inclusions (where identified)	All are trade names, and the inclusions are not one fixed mineral.	Do not infer the inclusion species from colour alone.
Jade	Jadeite jade, Nephrite jade, or Fei Cui as confirmed by report	"Jade" is not a single mineral species, and its scope differs between languages.	Products must state the specific material and the treatment status; "jade" may not serve as a catch-all.
Pearl	Natural Pearl / Cultured Pearl / Imitation Pearl	CIBJO and the FTC draw a clear distinction between the unqualified word "pearl", cultured pearls and imitation pearls.	The qualifier must be adjacent and equally conspicuous; a natural origin must be evidenced.
Synthetic / Composite / Imitation Opal	Synthetic Opal, Opal Doublet / Triplet, Imitation Opal	The three types of man-made product differ in structure and definition.	They must not be used interchangeably, and "synthetic" must not be assigned without composition or structure data.
Coral / Precious Coral	The specific coral group plus the scientific name and any treatment	"Precious coral" is limited to certain Corallidae, and CITES status differs between corals.	Confirm the scientific name, the treatments, the source and the permit requirements of the destination market first.
Unakite Jasper	Unakite rock	Unakite is an epidote-feldspar-quartz rock, not a jasper.	"Jasper" may be kept only as a search term for tracking the misused name; it must not enter the product name.
Sandalwood Entry on this site: Wood	The Chinese wood name plus the scientific name	The Chinese term covers more than one botanical taxon, and Santalum and Pterocarpus are not the same genus.	Do not translate it as sandalwood or white sandalwood before the scientific name is confirmed; check CITES and the timber documents.
Super Seven, Lemurian, Azeztulite	Quartz / quartz with multiple inclusions (trade name in brackets)	These are neither IMA species nor CIBJO-standardised varieties, and the names prove nothing about a fixed composition, an ancient civilisation or energy.	Claims about "seven minerals", frequencies, healing, rarity or origin stories must not be presented as fact.
Angelite Entry on this site: Blue Anhydrite	Blue anhydrite (trade name: Angelite)	Angelite is neither a separate mineral species nor a variety of gypsum.	The material is identified as anhydrite; dyeing, stabilisation, coating and other treatments require separate evidence.
Cinnabar bracelets	Cinnabar product (state the mercury sulfide content, the base material, the binder and the process)	Finished goods on the market may be cinnabar grains, powder plus resin, a coating or an imitation, and mercury safety is at issue.	Composition, migration and destination-market legislation must be reviewed by a qualified party; avoid dust, heating and mouthing by children.
Australian white, Tennyo, Aurora, Baroque	Cultured pearl type plus shape, grade and report-based qualifiers	The four terms denote, respectively, a market shorthand, a laboratory quality designation, a lustre grade and a shape - they are not materials at the same level.	The word "cultured" may not be omitted; species, freshwater or saltwater, origin, report and treatments are each disclosed separately.
Seed beads, Czech beads, Liuli Entry on this site: Czech-made Bead, Liuli	State the bead form, the glass material and the place of manufacture separately	"Seed bead" is a bead form, "Czech" is a place of manufacture, and modern liuli is usually man-made glass - none of these names settles the material.	The listing title must give the actual material, the size, the man-made status and the evidence of origin.
Chinese trade names rendered as shuimo yu, "blue turquoise", "green fluorite" and "goldstone" Entry on this site: Shuimo Yu, Jinsha Stone	Keep the original trade name and add "material to be identified"	For shuimo yu, and for the trade names rendered as "blue turquoise", "green fluorite" and "goldstone", the authoritative texts consulted do not establish a one-to-one correspondence with albite jade, turquoise, fluorite or goldstone glass. (The name rendered as "soda stone" was listed here until 20 August 2026 and has been moved out: its risk is not that no correspondence can be found, but that two established names genuinely collide — in Chinese mineral nomenclature it is the accepted name for nahcolite, NaHCO₃, while the bead market uses it for a rock consisting chiefly of sodalite, Na₈(Al₆Si₆O₂₄)Cl₂. The advice given here, to keep the original trade name, is actively wrong for that name, because what it keeps is the source of the collision. See instead the risk name covering lanwenshi and "soda stone".)	Switch to the corresponding formal material name only after batch-level testing or supplier material evidence is obtained.
Bi Yu / Jasper Entry on this site: Bi Yu, Green Nephrite Variety	Bi Yu (the green nephrite variety, per GB/T) or Bi Shi (jasper, a quartz material) — choose according to the actual goods	In GB/T 16552 Annex A.2 the Chinese name Bi Yu denotes the green variety of nephrite (Hetian Yu); the formal Chinese name for the English term Jasper is Bi Shi. GB/T 34098-2017, Classification and nomenclature of quartzose jade, defines Bi Shi (jasper) in its own clause 5.4 as a cryptocrystalline quartz aggregate that ranges from semi-translucent to opaque, and lists it among the basic names in clause 6, and GB/T 16552 Annex A.2 likewise gives "Chalcedony (Agate/Jasper)"; two current national standards corroborate the point independently. This entry makes no claim that a formal renaming ever took place: the six pages of GB/T 34098-2017 nowhere contain the characters for Bi Yu, its foreword contains no supersession clause, and it is a newly issued standard that replaces nothing, so it cannot structurally carry such an act; the withdrawn 2010 and 2003 editions of GB/T 16552 are not available for online inspection, so where any renaming actually occurred cannot be verified here. In Japanese the same two characters are read as jasper, but that usage has no standing in any naming standard and belongs to ordinary language and to geological practice: the only current Japanese code for gem names, the JJA/AGL definitions and nomenclature of substances used as gems or for ornament (revised November 2025, https://jja.ne.jp/lib/rules/pdf/gemguide.pdf), lists the name for jasper in katakana on page 11, beside the Latin form Jasper, and does not use the Chinese characters anywhere in its seventeen pages, and the Geological Survey of Japan rock lists, the prefectural stones table and Open-File Report 561 do not use them either. The three sides disagree with one another.	The Chinese, English and Japanese names must not be translated mechanically into one another. The bare Chinese name defaults to green nephrite, following the practice of Chinese supply channels, but the product name must read "Bi Yu (green nephrite)" and keep a marker that the material is still to be confirmed by testing; the bare name alone is not acceptable. Qualified forms — red, ocean, leopard-skin and picture jasper — are always to be handled as jasper, a quartz material, and must not fall through to the nephrite entry merely because they contain the same two characters. In traditional Chinese and in Japanese the name denotes jasper by ordinary usage and geological practice rather than by any naming standard — the current Japanese code, the JJA/AGL definitions and nomenclature (revised November 2025), gives the name in katakana and does not use the Chinese characters. This runs the opposite way to mainland usage, so each locale must be decided separately.
African Turquoise	African turquoise (material subject to testing); once tested, name the material as it is found: turquoise, dyed magnesite or other	Market accounts contradict one another: some present it as genuine turquoise of African origin, while press reports have questioned it as an imitation and quoted a provincial geology bureau specialist recommending laboratory testing, with no test result published. This entry rests on press and market reports, not on any authoritative original held in this wiki — GB/T, CIBJO and FTC do not list the name — and must not be cited as an authority. The handling mirrors the existing cat's eye entry: make no claim about the material before testing.	Wording such as natural turquoise must not be used before testing; keep the material-subject-to-testing marker and rewrite both the product name and the treatment disclosure according to the test result.
Lanwenshi / soda stone	Sodalite; under GB/T 16552 clause 5.1.1 c) the trade name lanwenshi may appear only as an annotation	First, the colloquial Chinese name rendered as "soda stone" is the accepted Chinese name for nahcolite (sodium bicarbonate), so the two names genuinely collide. Second, glass imitations circulate (often listed as imitation goods with glass given in the material field) and dyed material is also sold. Third, the name is close to those of blue lace agate and of the trade name rendered as blue turquoise, while the materials differ, and the three must never be substituted for one another. Fourth, Blue-vein(ed) Stone is not an established bead-material name and must not be used as the English name. GB/T 16552 Annex A.2 gives Sodalite as the formal name; neither Chinese trade name occurs anywhere in the standard or in its published revision draft, and CIBJO Gem Materials Definitions has no entry for a sodalite rock (its dedicated Rock column is empty for sodalite). Both trade names therefore lack any standard backing and can only be handled under clause 5.1.1 c), for which the standard supplies its own template: Taishan jade must be named serpentine and may carry the note "trade name: Taishan jade". The collision is asymmetric: Chinese-language sources on nahcolite do not mention the bead-market usage at all, so no warning can be expected from that side.	The product name must always be the formal name Sodalite (or sodalite jade; naming rule 5.1.2.2 a) allows only the word for jade to be appended to a natural mineral or rock name, so there is no such name as "sodalite rock"). The trade name lanwenshi may appear only as a note reading "trade name: lanwenshi" in the quality documents and must never stand alone; the name rendered as "soda stone" may not be used even as a note. No claim of natural sodalite as a species may be made before testing, and the goods must not be described merely as a natural stone in a way that hides the possibility of a glass imitation; dyeing and imitation must be disclosed for the actual goods. The English name is Sodalite.